I had a similar situation 2 years ago... I had a cold for 6 months but also a problem with a nerve in my throat which would make it close while I was coughing so that I could not breathe.

It got better thanks to a change in my diet and finding that I had a serious lack of vitamin B12 which influences the nerves. This happens as one gets older but in my case, also because I was a vegetarian.

Just to say that these things happen to everyone, and small changes can have big influences.

I don't know if things have become worse lately or if I'm more sensitive, but since I've re-surfaced I can't help but notice how awful the stories on dKos have become. Practically every story is about republican idiocy or some truly awful breach of the Constitution by the Obama administration.

I am so glad I'm 3,000 miles way cos the place is imploding. I just worry that there are too many tories in westminster who desperately want to emulate the republicans

Not trying to say the US is exceptional. Same things are going on all over the world to a greater or lesser extent.

The situation here is if Congress doesn't act by Friday the US is going to get Greek-style Austerity good and hard, in one fell swoop.

Unless Congress intervenes, the law requires the Obama administration to impose $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts to military and domestic programs on March 1. Those cuts would be the start of $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade.

The looming sequestration is much larger than previous ones, though. Over the full fiscal year -- Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 -- the cuts would equal roughly 5 percent of nonmilitary programs and 8 percent of defense programs. Because they would hit almost halfway through the fiscal year, the White House Office of Management and Budget estimates the true impact for the final seven months to be closer to 9 percent for nondefense programs and 13 percent for defense programs.

VERY roughly that is about $200 billion in direct cuts affecting, to a greater or lesser extent, something like $1 trillion of economic activity, using the 1:5 rule.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

One interesting thing is that there is a lot of hand-wringing over here about how the whole problem is a minority party in our Senate having veto power over everything, and that how the solution would be a parliamentary system where there is a majority party and the minority is much less powerful. (Ignoring the whole LibDem situation in the U.K.)

Seems like a bunch of countries with parliamentary systems have similar problems even though they already have a simple majority rule.

Although maybe there is no good example of a two party parliamentary system...

The US seems to have its good and bad points. On the one hand, the local control over candidate selection via the primary system has resulted in the Democrats being a bit better than their fake-left European counterparts. I think the Dems have gotten dramatically better in the past 6 years or so on a bunch of issues, and are slowly trending in the right direction.

On the other hand, the system is paralyzed by a reality-denying right that is far, far crazier than any of the mainstream center-right parties in Europe - and a set of rules and procedures that give them an outsized ability to gain seats and take hostages.